บท 85: All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 81
We have talked a lot about characters, plot contrivances, and… and not much else, really.
But anime, manga, and video games are, ultimately, visual mediums.
What this means is that things don't happen in a vacuum. Words are not let out into a contextless void, unless you're Gainax and your budget has run out, and… Well.
Setting.
It's important.
It's important to have your characters be [somewhere]. To have the school's outcast take refuge in the cool, sterile, claustrophobic solace of the toilets. To have the wandering martial artist travel across forested mountains while yelling about just how lost he is. To have any single Ghibli character run down the same grassy hills.
The place where the action takes place influences everything about it, from the mood to the significance of events.
And that goes double for the time in which it occurs.
Watching the coming dawn together after a night of shared travails? Wiping your sweaty brow after withstanding a biking excursion during harsh noon? Having a melancholy conversation tinted red by the setting Sun?
It's all meaningful. Everything becomes different, colorful, just because of that.
And then, there's night.
There's… the cool that comes as the sky darkens. The silence that makes every noise that much louder. The… The peace.
The solitude.
It changes the world around you. It turns it into something else. Something other, just because it lacks so much of what it's usually defined by.
The streets are lit by insufficient lights, the traffic dwindles until only a few cars pass by, heralded by rumbling motors that would go unnoticed during rush hour, and the people…
The people aren't there.
As the night advances? As it takes over the world and demands that those who follow the way of the slave wage go to rest and sleep to face another day of underpaid labor?
As only those who are outside the norms of society, by habit, accident, or occasion, wander through streets of shadow and amber light, as the rustling of bare branches moved by an unseen wind becomes the loudest noise in a city that is usually bustling, as your lungs fill with air sharper and cleaner than any you could take while the roads are crowded…
You look upon a different world. A city that is yours but unlike the one you usually see.
And you can look at yourself being there.
And, because the scene is different, because the [time] is different…
You see things you rarely allow yourself to watch.
"Have you calmed down?" the girl I am now seeing in yet another way asks from my left.
I don't look at her. At luminous honey that shines despite the dim, lone lamp keeping this corner of the park under Shizu's apartment building from being submerged fully into the night that surrounds us.
The wooden bench is cool, the sensation seeping through my clothes, the plastic, green paint making it feel as if it was already wet with dew drops.
Her hand is on my left knee, the fabric of my pants wrinkled under her touch, and her warmth is that much more apparent just because of the refreshing cold that seems intent on taking away the heat that still crawls beneath my forehead.
"I am sorry," I tell her.
She waits, letting me stew.
How cunning of you, Iroha.
"What for?" she finally asks.
And this is where I would launch into a diatribe about unfair gender stereotypes. About men having to be mind readers, to guess what it is that we have done wrong rather than being able to cover our messes up with just a blanket apology.
This is where I would rant about Iroha ruthlessly exploiting any and all advantages given to her and those she's had to steal.
Except…
Except I am sorry.
"For… you talked with Haruno. You know why I didn't call you," I say.
"I do," she answers.
And so I close my eyes, wet my lips.
And turn to her.
Her eyes are precisely as I pictured: wide, gleaming, blinding me with more light than that of the small circle that surrounds us and throws the shadow of our bench over the grass behind us.
Beautiful.
Sad.
"Then, I am sorry for being… for being afraid of showing you a part of me," I tell her.
Her hand leaves my knee, and just the loss of her warmth almost makes me shudder.
But then… then she cradles my cheek, and I am forced not to look away from her.
Because that's what I betrayed, what I denied her, and so that's what she wants me to do.
"It hurt," she says.
I nod.
"It… It felt like you didn't trust me. Like you thought I would just… like I would not… I don't even have the words," she says, her eyes leaving mine for a single second that is longer than I care to endure.
"I do," I tell her.
Then she looks at me. Just… Just takes me in.
And nods in invitation.
"You felt like I betrayed our relationship. Like I lied to you. Like everything we've shared didn't matter to me, not if I was still willing to hide anything that I should've already bared to you."
She nods.
It hurts to see.
But it's me that's caused that hurt, and so I don't have the right to look away from it.
Even if I wanted to.
"Iroha… That's… You are right to feel this way, to feel like I did something wrong, but… You are wrong to think it."
"What does that mean?" she says, the tips of her fingers slightly cool on the patch of skin behind the corner of my eye.
"It means…" I hesitate, looking at those eyes of hers. At eyes too bright to look at me with anything other than contempt. "It means that it's not that I didn't trust you. I [know] I can… Damn it."
I blink, and I allow that to linger, to give me a pause, a break from seeing her under the night sky.
To see the naked, raw trust I injured.
"We already had this conversation, Hachi," she says. "Just… Just yesterday—"
I shake my head, and she caresses my cheek with my slow denial.
"No. It's a different conversation. It's… It's not me being too focused on a problem to think about how it will affect you. It's not me being… like I always am. This…"
I trail off, yet again looking into her eyes. Her bright eyes. Her luminous eyes.
The eyes I didn't want to sully.
"I am… I am broken," I finally tell her. "Yes, we all are, all four of us, but… but I'm more like Haruno in some ways. I have something awful inside of me, and I know you've heard about it. About what I pulled during the school festival, or about my fake confession to the fujoshi—"
"The [what?"]
I blink at her.
She glares at me.
Or, at least, she tries to as a blush rises steadily across her cheeks.
I almost laugh at it.
"It was during the school trip. Tobe wanted to confess to Ebina and asked for the Service Club's help. At the same time… We were asked by Miura and Ebina to keep Hayama's clique functional. Yuigahama and Yukinoshita didn't understand what that meant, but…
"I did.
"Ebina would've refused any romantic advances and done so coldly and unambiguously. The tension would've broken the group in two, the girls and boys going their own way, and none of them had any idea how to face the issues without triggering the conflict in question.
"But I did."
I smile a bit at the memory. At the romantic setting so carefully chosen by Yui, at the moment engineered by all of them to stage a fortuitous meeting between the two would-not-be-lovers.
It's… It's weird that I can think fondly of it, given all that happened. All that developed from yet another moment of me being… [me].
"What did you…" she starts to ask.
But doesn't finish the question.
Because she's Iroha. And she knows me better than almost anyone.
Even if I never wanted her to know this part of me.
"Yui and Yukino were both sad and furious at me, you know? At me taking on the pain of rejection and humiliation just so that Tobe wouldn't suffer from it. Hayama… He was cowardly grateful, I think, for all the good that did me.
"Because I didn't care about what just happened. I didn't care about revisiting my rejection-based trauma, or about putting on a performance for a group of people who all realized I was lying and why I was doing so. Who all were willing to benefit from my lie and humiliation.
"What I cared about was…"
I look up.
It was also night, back then, and the soft breeze slid across swaying bamboo, rustling long, thin leaves.
The setting was important, after all.
"What I cared about was seeing Yui and Yukino being hurt by my willingness to hurt myself," I whisper.
And Iroha hugs me.
"Don't do that," she says, her face buried in my chest, her breath warm, her words strained.
"Do what?" I ask as I reflexively wrap her in my arms.
"This. Dismissing your pain because you care more about others. Because you don't value yourself like you should, like [I] do."
"Iroha, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be healthy for me to desperately want to get pregnant from myself."
She lets out a strangled peal of laughter and then pounds a hammer fist against my chest.
Apparently, love hurts.
How unexpected.
"Don't make me laugh. This is serious, you moron," she protests.
I nod, my chin brushing over her soft, short hair, and I idly wonder about an older Iroha maybe growing it out, about the golden tresses falling down her back, moving from side to side as she walked in front of me, full of energy, of life.
Moving away from me.
It's… I think I would be happy, even then. If she grew up past what we have. If she found happiness somewhere else, somewhere that wasn't by my side.
If she, Iroha Isshiki, grew up to be a woman who, sometimes, looked fondly back on her teen years and her first torrid romance with two extraordinary women and a bewildering boy.
I would be happy.
But now I just clutch her closer to me.
"Hachi…?" she asks, confused, as my arms tighten until they tremble.
"I am sorry," I tell her.
"I know, I… I forgive you, I—"
"No," I breathe out, my voice more exhalation than words. "It's… there're parts of me that… it [feels] good, you know? It's so wrong it becomes right, to just… to just [dive] into that dark pool that is still there despite all the light you've given me. I like the anger, the hatred, the indignation, the certainty of knowing that the world is fucking awful and I'm justified in whatever I do. It's so hard to get out of that because a part of me doesn't want to, never wants to. Because…
"Because…"
I don't have the words.
I just have that feeling. That memory of all the times I ran away from the world and retreated into myself, comforted by every awful, terrible thing I could come up with. Every justification, every grudge, every twisted revenge fantasy.
For years, those were the things I used to keep the loneliness and hurt away, even if the pain and solitude were very much a part of what I dwelt into.
"Hachi," she says as she pushes away, her hands on my chest, her eyes once more on mine, "do you really think I don't have that? That I never stayed up late, in my dark bedroom, just [thinking] about all the things that were wrong, all the people I hated? That I don't… that I don't have this resentment, this hatred?"
I look at her and try to look for that thing I find so easily in Haruno.
And I don't find it.
"No. Not like me. You are… you are [better]. And I want you to keep being better. I don't want to dirty you—"
"I am really tempted to give you that slap right now."
"Not the time for your kinky fetishes, woman."
"Gah! How can you—this! You start ranting about your deepest, darkest secret, and you won't stop joking even then! I don't even know when you are being—"
I kiss her.
Her eyes fly wide open, and I…
I indulge.
In her warmth, her softness, her…
[Her].
Until she, again, pushes me away.
"Don't… don't run away from this. Please, don't make me—" she says.
"Always," I tell her.
"What?"
"Your question. When am I being genuine? With you? [Always]. If I joke, or tease you, or kiss you, or take you in the middle of the school's courtyard—"
"A [corner]. A [hidden] corner—"
"Don't make it sound like a challenge, Iroha; I am more than willing to—"
"Parole, parole, parole," she singsongs as she rolls her eyes.
"… Is that French? Has Haruno given you lessons?"
"In French? Well, you [could] say that."
I blink at her.
She shows me a smirk.
And I'm very tempted to—well, no.
I [do] drag her into my lap.
She lets out a short squeal that she cuts off as she remembers just what time it is and that we're surrounded by the silence of the night, but now her back is against my chest, and the night's cool is no longer relevant.
Not as long as I hold her.
As I keep her by my side.
As she remains happy here, and I'm not forced to watch her walk away to be happier elsewhere.
"I love you," I say.
"I love you," she answers.
And I'm reminded of yesterday. Of how she kept saying that with me still inside her until Sagami found us, and I was [very quickly] out of her.
So I chuckle.
She lets out a sound of protest as she wiggles on top of me, her back pressing harder against my chest as she holds my arms around her waist.
I let her.
"I love you, Iroha Isshiki. More than I thought I would, than I [hoped]. I love you enough that the mere thought of you being touched by the parts of me I despise horrifies me. And I know that's unfair. I know that I want to see all of you, that I desperately want to touch those parts of you that you shy away from, but… but I had almost forgotten. I have been so happy, so [blessed], that I had had no reason to look for this part of me."
She lets the silence stretch, just looking straight ahead into the line of thick, perennial bushes and the trees behind them that are just now sprouting new leaves.
"I have always known, Hachi. The… the first thing we did together was to [scheme]. And you always saw through me. You always knew who I was, even as I fooled everyone around me. You… That's one of the things I love best about you, and I want to be for you what you are for me. I want to be the person that you don't need masks for."
I close my eyes and just… just breathe.
Her warmth. Her scent.
The notes of chamomile-scented shampoo, the thing I know from Komachi's brief bout with cosmetics, should lighten her hair and bring out more highlights. The thing that maybe Iroha uses to get her locks at least a tad as resplendent as her eyes.
Another mask, in a way.
One I just saw through at this very moment.
"I… I don't think that's entirely true. I think there's a lot of you I still have to find out, to discover. It was just recently that I learned quite a few… things, after all."
I can feel her blushing.
Or, at least, I can imagine I do.
"Okay. Fine. You don't know [everything] about me," she grumbles.
"No, I don't," I say.
And then I raise my right hand, clasp her chin with thumb and forefinger, and turn her to look back at me over her right shoulder.
"But I want to," I tell her.
Before I kiss her.
It's… It's light. Soft. Barely a meeting of our lips.
But it lingers until a slow parting as she opens luminous honey to shine her light on me, to show me wonder and caring I still am awed to find.
"So do I," she breathes out.
And then it's her that kisses me.
This time, it's deeper.
==================
This work is a repost of my second oldest fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/all-right-fine-ill-take-you-oregairu.15676/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 98 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).
Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Brain-chan's intrusions into Hachiman's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance
Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and help me keep writing snarky, maladjusted teenagers and their cake buffets, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!
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